<?php
/**
 * <https://y.st./>
 * Copyright © 2018 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
 * 
 * This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
 * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
 * the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
 * (at your option) any later version.
 * 
 * This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
 * but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
 * MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
 * GNU General Public License for more details.
 * 
 * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
 * along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org./licenses/>.
**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Idiotic tech support',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		I completed the discussion assignments for the week:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Like you said, the non-return-to-zero encoding works well when combined with other methods, but it has some problems when used alone.
			It&apos;s more of a building block with which to build a working transmission encoding scheme than a working transmission encoding scheme itself.
			Like with many things, a simple solution is has too many technical problems, but a complex solution is too difficult to properly design.
			Instead, several simple mechanisms can be combined, resulting in the feasibility of a simple design but the functionality of a complex design.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Thank you!
			I wasn&apos;t sure how to pull off the bulleted format required by the assignment while still covering the important details, so I split it up like that.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Yeah, it can be difficult to find explanations sometimes.
			Textbook writers have to choose between not babying advanced users and providing explanations for people new to the field.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Clock synchronisation is actually less of a problem with the white-noise-ish signal.
			The white-noise-like signal isn&apos;t supposed to have a smooth gradient, be random, or anything like true white noise.
			It only transitions between zero and one frequently and with about even counts for each type of bit.
			This provides the transitions needed for clock synchronisation, while also helping with the direct current loss issues.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Yeah, the type of desert in question really matters.
			A desert is a place with little precipitation, but that doesn&apos;t mean there&apos;s little water, for example.
			Wet deserts do exist.
			People often think of deserts as hot, but there are also very cold deserts.
			The category of &quot;deserts&quot; is a varied and diverse group of ecosystem configurations.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Invasive species tend to be harmful, but that&apos;s not what the term &quot;invasive&quot; means.
			Whether we&apos;re doing more good or more harm, we&apos;re still invaders to the area.
			That said, I strongly believe that in most places, we&apos;re doing more harm than good.
			We <strong>*could*</strong> have a positive effect on the ecosystem, but most people don&apos;t seem to care.
			They don&apos;t want to bother, so they just harm the environment instead because it&apos;s the easy thing to do.
			I hope one day that we as a species learn to want to change our was, but for now, yeah, our species is the villain.
		</p>
		<p>
			Another reason it helps to label us as an invasive species is that it has to be done in order not to put us in our own, separate, magically-exempt-from-everything category.
			Humans have a tendency to not think they&apos;re animals, even though we very much are.
			In fact, we don&apos;t just <strong>*look like*</strong> apes, we <strong>*actually are*</strong> a species of ape.
			It&apos;s important that people not think themselves magically better than other forms of life.
			For example, it&apos;s fine for us to think we&apos;re more intelligent than other known animals, but it&apos;s not okay for us to think we&apos;re more intelligent than all animals, as that would require us to be more intelligent than ourselves.
			People often disregard other forms of life because they don&apos;t regard themselves as a part of the category of life, and don&apos;t regard themselves as part of their ecosystem.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I certainly wouldn&apos;t be <strong>*against*</strong> us intentionally making ourselves extinct, but that&apos;s a misinterpretation of what I said.
			I&apos;m not saying we need to all die out.
			I&apos;m just saying we need to stop breeding long enough for our population count to drop quite a bit.
			Once there&apos;s fewer people, we can switch tactics and hold our population more steady instead of exploding it again.
		</p>
		<p>
			One issue I suppose is that we have no natural predictors to help keep us from overpopulating.
			We have to manage that on our own.
			And as we&apos;ve already overpopulated, we need to thin ourselves out.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Yeah, the misconception about deserts is pretty ingrained in a lot of us non-desert people, myself included.
			People such as yourself that come from the desert have a much better view of what a desert can really be.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			The thing about China is that it was forced.
			The government required couples have no more than one child.
			What I recommend is that people <strong>*choose*</strong> not to have children.
			If the government in any way tries to force this, it won&apos;t work out well.
		</p>
		<p>
			Of course, that&apos;s exactly why my idea will never work either.
			People are terrible.
			I can&apos;t really put into words what I think of the current mindset of people wanting children, but I think this comic sums it up well:
		</p>
		<a href="http://vhemt.org/paleyart.htm"><img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_3.0_US/vhemt.org./socute.jpg" alt="But they&apos;re so CUTE!" class="framed-centred-image" width="783" height="496"/></a>
		<p>
			(<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/">{$a['CC BY-SA 3.0 US']}</a> <a href="https://blog.ninapaley.com/">Nina Paley</a>)
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			That must be nice to live in one of the hotspots, even if you don&apos;t have the time to go out and experience nature on a daily basis.
			You still get to experience the beauty of the area on a regular basis.
		</p>
		<p>
			I wasn&apos;t aware that redwoods can absorb fog.
			That&apos;s a useful ability, considering the lack of rainfall.
			It explains how the trees are able to get so massive without precipitation.
			The lifespan of Gymnogyps californianus is pretty amazing too; sixty years is pretty long for a bird.
			Are you sure it&apos;s extinct though?
			My sources say it&apos;s still alive, but critically endangered.
		</p>
		<p>
			Government corruption is a huge problem, I agree.
			The government is just a puppet for large corporations, at this point.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			It&apos;s great to hear that Aquila chrysaetos and Canis lupus are making a comeback.
			Once extinct, it&apos;s too late to undo the damage, so it&apos;s pretty sad when a species dies out entirely.
			It sounds like climate change is killing the Leontopodium alpinum though.
			We really need to chill with the fossil fuel consumption.
			I can see how tourism is causing damage as you mentioned as well.
			Some natural environments should really be left alone.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			That&apos;s really interesting, and a bit scary, that such a small portion of the world&apos;s land holds most of the planet&apos;s species.
			If those hotspots are damaged too much, the planet as a whole will likely be very negatively impacted.
		</p>
		<p>
			Human expansion is a huge threat.
			Once we, for example, cut down a rainforest, we can&apos;t bring it back.
			We can replant the trees and some of the other plants, but the rest of the ecosystem involved is just lost.
			To be clear, I&apos;m not against the forestry industry, I just think we need to be cutting things down only in areas we&apos;ve already allocated for that; as in, replant and harvest again.
			Spreading to new areas is the problem.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		I received another letter from my academic advisor on behalf of the tech team.
		My response has enough quotations in it to get the jist of what they told me:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Dear <span style="redacted">[REDACTED]</span> and tech people,
		</p>
		<p>
			&gt; note however that our Moodle platform requires Javascript to be<br/>
			&gt; enabled in order to function reliably
		</p>
		<p>
			Actually, it&apos;s just the opposite.
			The website functions quite well with JavaScript disabled, but as shown in the video, does *not* function reliably when JavaScript is enabled.
		</p>
		<p>
			&gt; Kindly note that our new theme does not show the menu with external<br/>
			&gt; links unless you are logged in. This is how the new design operates<br/>
			&gt; and we will always strive to make this intuitively better as deemed<br/>
			&gt; fit.
		</p>
		<p>
			Removal of external links when logged out is *not* intuitive; it&apos;s just cumbersome.
		</p>
		<p>
			&gt; We suggest you check your computer configuration or try to use a<br/>
			&gt; different computer and see if the same problem occurs.
		</p>
		<p>
			&gt; and it is highly recommended that you will try from another computer.
		</p>
		<p>
			As I&apos;ve mentioned in the past (perhaps not this time, but the first time I reported the website bug, I&apos;ve tried on multiple computers and with multiple Web browsers.
			It&apos;s not a configuration issue on my end.
		</p>
		<p>
			&gt; Moreover, the problem you mentioned about the website eating your<br/>
			&gt; coursework seems to be a problem from your end as no other student has<br/>
			&gt; ever reported this or anything similar.
		</p>
		<p>
			As I know I mentioned this time, it&apos;s likely an abuse of AJAX on *your* end.
			On faster connections such as many other students have, this wouldn&apos;t present an issue.
			However, not all of us have access to a fast connection.
			The most likely thing is that your website *does not work with JavaScript enabled* for slow connections.
			Again, if your website only functions on high-speed connections, that&apos;s an issue on your end.
			It&apos;s not difficult to make it with with slow connections; just remove the frequent AJAX requests and everything should work fine.
		</p>
		<p>
			&gt; Sometimes it happens that the browser prevents pasting into a field if<br/>
			&gt; it is done with the keyboard (CTRL+C  and CTRL+V) but, it will work<br/>
			&gt; just fine when tried with the menu that appears when you right click<br/>
			&gt; with the mouse.
		</p>
		<p>
			When the website locks up as it does a couple times a minute, everything locks up.
			That includes the pasting from the right-click menu.
			Though only an annoyance, that also includes basic hyperlinks; I can&apos;t navigate the website while it&apos;s locked up either.
			Again, the *only* solution I can use on my end is to disable JavaScript, which makes everything work perfectly.
		</p>
		<p>
			&gt; That explained, my advice again is to use a text editor for long<br/>
			&gt; submissions, and try different ways of copy pasting
		</p>
		<p>
			Copying and pasting is great for certain types of assignments.
			Namely, those that are substantial enough to be saved in my archive: <https://y.st./en/coursework/&gt;.
			However, it&apos;s incredibly cumbersome for shorter messages, such as feedback in peer grading.
			Typing one or two sentences up in another program and pasting them into the broken school website isn&apos;t a solution; it&apos;s a bandage that lets you tell yourselves it&apos;s okay not to fix the bug.
			If you don&apos;t want to fix the bug in your website, I can&apos;t make you.
			However, I&apos;m also not going to accept lame excuses as justification either.
			It&apos;s plenty easy to accept a message from you saying you won&apos;t fix it because you don&apos;t care about the quality of your website, but if you claim not to need to fix it because X when X isn&apos;t at all valid, it sort of invalidates the whole statement.
		</p>
		<p>
			Kind regards,<br/>
			~ Alex Yst
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
END
);
